Friday, February 27, 2009

money saving hint for the day

I am all about saving money online. I have lots of little things I do and this one I need to share with you. It helps me save money and all for my love of reading. I used to do booksfree.com. It was like an online library. I never had to leave my house for a book. But the cost was high considering how long it took to ship to Oregon. So I canned that club and looked for something better for me.
That is when I found Swap Your Used Books - PaperBackSwap.com I love this place. You start by taking 10 paperbacks and listing them. Once they are listed you are given 1 credit. Credits are then used to "buy" any book in their collection. Every time someone orders your books you pay the cost to ship it to them by media mail. Once they receive the book you are given a credit. So I get a book for the cost of shipping, usually about $2.40. (I weigh my book on a scale we have and then just put on the right amount of stamps. Sometimes I go to the PO but I rather do everything from home.) LOVE THIS. Most popular books usually have a waiting list but I just put my name in the mix and wait them out. Some come up faster then others. Once I am done with a book I ordered I can decide to either keep the book for my own collection or repost it and hope someone else orders it so I can get a credit. Right now I have 5 credits and about 20 books posted. So I shouldn't run out for quite some time. I have also used this to get Alicia books for Christmas. I can mark that I am looking for books that look new and got some great books for her stocking.

I think you ALL should join. It is the cheapest way I have found so far to get books delivered to my house.

To help me get extra credits you can add wilson4 to the referral section.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Strange Bubble

So Stayton is in some strange bubble. We are at a higher elevation then Salem but we seem to not get snow when Salem does. And what is depressing is that North Santiam District is on a 2 hour delay. Which means that all surrounding areas are probably pretty bad. Just not here. So I look out the window, with my fighting children behind me, at a normal Oregon day and wonder "WHY WHY WHY." :) Actually I was supposed to watch some kids today and also do some shuttling for another little preschooler and so I have been on the phone most of the morning trying to figure out what is happening to that. :) This was not a well advertised delay and teachers and parents alike are all scrambling.

But!
I did not have to get my children ready for school and that is worth something!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

My latest book

I finally finished a book I have been reading for months. It was called, Things We Couldn't Say. I picked it up because one morning Ben's alarm was set on radio and Dr Dobson was speaking. He had a Holocaust survivor who was promoting her book. She was a Dutch that hid Dutch Jews during the Holocaust and she ended the interview with the last letter she received from her fiance during the war. It had me crying, so I ordered the book. I couldn't read it all in one sitting like I usually can. It was all to real and I could only cry for so long before needing to put it down so now, months later, I am finally done. Diet, the author, started the war believing she could be a pacifist, and struggling with what God would have her do. But by the end of the war she was heavily involved with hiding Jews and spying on others. Below is an entry from her diary.

"Again, a conversation with the doctor. We always come back to the same point: 'The church may not mix in politics, he says, And I tell him that when you are a Christian and profess that God is Almighty, there is no single area of life from which you can eliminate God.'" diary from Diet Eman

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

OLD Stuff

So the kids school is doing a fundraiser. The nice thing about this is it is easy one! They are asking for old DVDs, digital cameras, cell phones, ipods and ink cartridges. It was a good way for me to clear out old DVDs I don't watch EVER. And I had old cartridges I didn't know what to do with so this was a great fundraiser for me. The best part is they are making it a class competition. So if you have anything in these categories we would love to take them off your hands and help them in their race to WIN!

The contest ends April 17th.

Monday, February 23, 2009

So the list below got me thinking of more books to read. I just ordered Vanity Fair, The Color Purple, and Rebecca from half.com. Now hopefully I will like these books! But my stack of books to be read was starting to get shrink so I needed to add some. :) I wish . . I wish. . I wish I had a library in my house. I have such good books and no room for them. I end up giving them away, trading them or selling them when I really run out of room and have no other option. I hate having to do that! O, well. At least I get to read them!
(I just added an other x for 1984. I went to check that book out and realized I had read that one already.)

I got this list from Amy and I thought it was fun so I'm passing it along. The BBC made a list of classics that they thought everyone should read. They said they reckon that most people have read six of these. Put an "x" behind the ones that you have read. I tag whomever wants to play! I have read 33 1/2 of the them so I am not sure that count can be accurate. I bet people have read more then 6. I also found a new list of books to try to complete! Thank you Amy for the suggestions!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials trilogy - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens X
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 1/2 X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce X
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zol
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Saturday, February 21, 2009

I was tagged

I got a huge smile when I saw what my 7th folder was in My Pictures. Amy tagged me to pick my 7th folder and my 7th picture in that folder. When I saw which folder it was I thought, "serves her right for picking 'EVERYONE' to be tagged." It is the folder titled Alicia's Cast. I was hoping for a really really icky picture but I only have 7 pictures in this folder and it is this picture.



The sad thing is I am not as smug now because for some reason I cannot get these pictures to get bigger without getting blurrier. Now when I first put them on my computer 2 years ago they were fine so I am not sure what is up. But at least I know they are saved over at Snapfish.com safe and ready if I need them again. (They are also on a CD as well.)

Anyway this is the picture of Alicia getting her cast removed after she broke her arm jumping of a bunk bed.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Book Reviews

So I have had some of you interested in the books I am reading. I had decided that every 10 weeks I would review the books I had read. I just had not let you all in on that yet. So in 3 weeks I plan on letting you know what I thought about each book. If you can't wait, for some reason, you can watch me review them on camera for expotv.com. I hate being watched but I do review each book as I read them. And for every video you watch I make a whopping penny! Yep .01! But really it does add up.

Expotv.com is a site that you review products, anything and everything, and get $5.00 for up to 20 videos a month. I know I have gotten my sister and one sister-in-law to also be active with them. If you are looking for a good way to make some change this is it. I made over $1300.00 last year and will probably make about the same there this year. If you are interested here is the link to sign up.

Monday, February 16, 2009

"It only seems fair that if we have to have global warning we should get to be warm!"

I found this letter on a blog on Seattle Moms. I know I am not near Seattle, not even the same state BUT I occasion there as they did a contest there once so I go back every once in awhile.

Anyway, this post is what I have been thinking lately. Especially as I was frozen today at the park with the kids!

Dear President Obama,

I noticed that you’ve allocated several hundred million dollars in the economy stimulus package for researching global warming.

I also couldn’t help but notice that there’s a whole lot of snow and cold and ICE this year. Like even more than last year or the year before that or the previous FOURTY OR SIXTY or maybe even A HUNDRED years.

I’m not a fancy expert or anything, but it’s looking to me like
Global warming = more snow days than you can shake a stick at.

Maybe the scientists could look into that.

It only seems fair that if we have to have global warming, we should get to be WARM.

Sincerely, with much love and adoration (but only the professional kind)

~Bananas

Friday, February 13, 2009

Confession


When I was in grade school and then into middle school I thought I may write books someday. Well, a Marine Biologist that wrote books, but that isn't the point here. Anyway, I journaled EVERYTHING back then. I thought someday maybe I could use what was in my journals for a great book, again I was 11. . . Fast forward to today. I was thinking about Valentines Day and remembered writing down a beautiful love poem I found in a book I was reading in highschool. I dragged all my old diaries out and started to go through them searching for the poem to share with you all. I am pretty sure that any adult that thought they would use what they wrote in their diaries someday NEVER do. It was almost embarrassing just reading them. :) It reminded me of a lot of things though. The secret language my best friend Jill Young and I had in 7th grade, the boys I liked in middle and high school(Cody,Matt,Eric and then Ryan-but none of them were ever serious, and most never knew I liked them), the embarrassing moments I went through, old friends birthdays and I even wrote who was going with whom at that time. I am now torn. I am not sure I need these diaries around anymore. They take up space and seriously if I die I am not wanting ANYONE to read these. So should I toss them, burn them? Do any of you still have your journals around and what do you do with them?

O, and by the way have not found that poem yet. Hope to look again tomorrow. I do know it was by Gilbert Morris, Christian writer.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Give Me Your Eyes

For the last month or so I have really felt the need/desire to do "something." I want to volunteer somewhere where I feel like I am actually helping others. I want to be doing something for others outside of the church. I have been thinking how I would like to work at a suicide hotline but I am sure that would take some sort of counseling license. I am just at a loss for what to do. This song by Brandon Heath has become my hearts cry. He has said what I have been feeling in such a beautiful way.

"Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see"

It's SNOWING

It is snowing again. I am sure it won't stick, but OOOOHHHHH It is so pretty as it falls. It just brings out happy feelings.
Hope you all have a great morning!

Monday, February 9, 2009

my college friends

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
* Elbert Hubbard

Yesterday was a good day. It was a day that I looked forward to for about 2 weeks. A day without children. A day with girlfriends. A day that only comes about once a year. I went with my "girls" up to Washington to meet up with another special girlfriend! I left my house about 6:30 and met one in Salem. We then drove up to Portland and grabbed 2 more friends. We then continued on to "Puyallup, Tacoma, Seattle!" Well, we went north. We picked up Amy my kindred and went out to lunch and then on to a movie, He's Not That Into You. The sad thing is that the mall closed early on Sunday and that was about the end of the evening! It flew by. I got home about 11:30 and was unsure of where the day went BUT I do know I spent it with the best friends a girl could EVER have!

P.S. I brought my camera but did not use it. I am sorry there is no picture of the 5 of us for you to check out. Sorry Amy as well.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Our Saturdays of late

Alicia has been in basketball the last month or so. She practices on Wednesdays and has her games on Saturdays. She has had to miss some practices due to AWANA but she has gone to her games. Sadly her parents missed her first game as we were out of town, and then the next game I forgot my camera, and then I brought a camera with no batteries for the following game! BUT the last game I had a working camera and will now share with you my basketball star! When she first started the kids were all a little unsure of what to do. It is really amazing that each child on that team improves every week. I really get into the games and hope she sticks with basketball a few more years. At first she hated to go but now she likes it, though she WILL NOT admit that. She just does not like missing AWANA.

They stand in a line and are given wrist bands of different colors. They have to guard the person on the other team with the same wrist band color.


The girl guarding Alicia stuck to her like glue! Even when they weren't actually playing she would chase Alicia around. It was hilarious.



Alicia is getting passed the ball from the boy there. She was OPEN!! Thank goodness she did not have that other guard.